If You’re Going To Flake, Do it Right

Posted on July 26, 2016

People bail on plans all the time. It’s a natural process of being a semi-social individual. Hell, we’ve all done it. We’ve sat there wishing, waiting, praying that plans will fall through. We’ve pulled the sick card, the busy at work card, the family emergency classic.

All is well and good when best practices are used. But some people are blissfully unaware of said best practices and, after being flaked on five times this week, I’ve developed a vendetta against this very serious issue. Bad bailing practices must be stopped. Enough is enough.

Here are a few offences we need to put a stop to immediately.

The Tall Tale

For reasons unknown, whenever we try and get out of plans, we become the world’s greatest storytellers. We get creative, add unnecessary detail and finesse our excuses until they seem so intricate they’re no longer plausible. Why? Did it ever occur to anyone that we could maybe just tell the truth? A simple: “Hey, I know we had plans, but I’m really not feeling it today and I’d rather reschedule so when we hang I’m more Kim K and less T Swift.” I tried this earlier this week, and went over surprisingly well, proving sometimes honesty IS the best policy. Sometimes.

The Bailing Time Policy

If the realness is too scary for you, then go on and craft your tall tale, but make sure you get started early. This just in: there’s an acceptable window of time in which to bail. Don’t fuck it up. Please don’t call me an hour before we’re supposed to meet and tell me you just can’t make it. Don’t text me ten minutes before I leave my house, after I’ve toiled over the perfect contour, to inform me you’re going to be “super late,” thus forcing ME to cancel our plans on your behalf. Just don’t. Give a person enough time to accept your flakiness and make other arrangements.

The Set-Up

We all need to stop with the set up. And by set up I mean the “I’m going to bail” hints you drop for hours, sometimes DAYS before your plans. Cancelling on a person is like taking off a Band-Aid: it’s best to get it over with quickly. You know which texts I’m referring to. You’ve been on both the giving and receiving end. It starts with an innocent, “I’m feeling real off today” and ends with a full-blown fake flu. Stop that. People recognize a bail set up when they see one.

Ghosting

This brings us to the final and worst offence: ghosting. I’ve never done this myself because it takes a particular kind of callous disregard for other people to pull off. There is nothing worse than being in “are we hanging or not” limbo. First you sit around wondering if they’re just busy or running late. Then, for a brief moment, worry sets in and you wonder if they’re okay. You then contemplate making other plans but you decide against it, because if they do respond you’re at risk of being horribly rude. After hours of silence, you realize you’ve been ghosted. And it feels awful.

Pardon the rant. I can still feel the burning sting of cancellation from last week. Really, this all comes down to one golden rule: don’t make plans you don’t want to follow through with in the first place.